A Martini cadet re-chambered to 22 K-Hornet came into the shop last week. It was locked up tight with a spent case in the chamber. After disassembling the action and removing the spent case, I found that the primer had made an indentation around the firing pin hole which was about .014" deep and locked up the action. Questions: Are the breech faces of the cadet so soft as to allow such a condition? What is the normal Rockwell C spec for this breech face? What is the PSI maximum for a Martini-cadet?

Think this is a pretty common problem with hotter loads in the Martini Cadet without a bushed firing pin hole. The dovetail bushing done by David (38_cal on the forum) will solve the problem. Based on cutting one, would guess the blocks are Rc lower 30's.Chuck

Had a similar problem a while back on two cadets. Customer was loading so hot the primmer was flowing back into the firing pin hole, pushing the firing pin back and locking the action. It didn't hurt the face of the bolt I told the customer to back off on his loads and that seems to have fixed the problem.

Most Cadet breech blocks are quite hard. One thing to check. Have seen in the past where when bushing the firing pin, the doer will drill and tap for say like a 6x48 sight screw and get the threads sloppy or something else happens but for whatever reason the screw insert will seat itself back into the face of the breech block and create this condition you speak of. The dovetail method is by far the way to go.

Back a long time ago when I did this type of work for a living, I saw a number of Martinis come in with this problem.

Most still had the older larger striker and needed the striker reduced and breech face bushed. Some had the breech face bushed but the striker fit was loose.

Bushing the breech block and close fitting the striker solved the problem.

I had one exception and in the worse possible rifle to have problems with--my wife's. When I built the rifle I set it up like the late Frank de Haas suggested, with the breech block binding against the back of the barrel just as it closed to avoid lever droop.

That rifle would bind up a lot. changing primer and backing off on loads didn't help.

It was not good to have the wife's rifle hanging up while she was out shooting gophers. She could say some very unlady-like things about gunsmiths when that occurred.

A couple years ago when I found the gauging letter on how the Martini action was supposed be set up I changed her rifle so there was a gap between breech block and back of the barrel with the action closed. Then I checked and reset the head space so it was measured with feeler gauge between breech face and go guage as stated in the Martini gauging letter.

This solved the problem for this rifle. It is the only rifle I setup like that so I can't say it is a solution for anything but this one rifle....